|
Back to the Weekly Notes 2007 Archives
Weekly Notes:
October 01, 2007:
Wrong:
Michigan’s no fault divorce laws are profoundly
wrong. They depend on people to be honest even though we know attorneys are
generally not. In a divorce case two attorneys can collude to drag a case out
while they bleed it for all it’s worth and the judges go along with it.
It’s a classic wink, wink, nod, nod evil game and it stinks! By Michigan law, a man who betrays his wife and children and
flaunts it is still entitled to ½ of her estate in the divorce
settlement. That is patently evil. It really stinks!
A Silly Strike:
Gettelfinger is no
Walter Ruther. He called a strike. It went on for three whole days. The
outcome was, several GM employees and workers from parasite firms lost some
pay. Most of them cannot afford it. The strike did not change a thing. Why?
Why did he do that? Was it to demonstrate his power? I think it demonstrated
his dumbassity. Bureaucrats are no different, be they running a corporation
or a union.
Phony War Heroes:
Now some people have
been caught pretending to be war heroes who have never been in a war. Some of
them have never been in uniform at all. They are frauds. I have the perfect
punishment for them. We should round them up, put them in uniforms, and send
them over to Iraq. Since they claim to be trained soldiers, we
need not bother training them. We can just pop them into the breach.
A Hearing:
It seems some of the NFL
retirees are testifying before congress in an attempt to gain additional
benefits. Why is congress hearing that? Because some of these retirees are
celebrities. I don’t think there will be any big hearings in Washington about Ford and GM stealing back their retiree
benefits. We are just a whole lot of regular people; small potatoes. We
don’t have that good old celebrity status and clout. Sigh!
I was a Kid:
In Saginaw, Michigan, some big shots have proposed to turn an ordinary field into a
soccer field. They want a two and a half million bucks grant plus two and a
half million in donations to do this. Say what? When I was a kid we wanted to
play football and baseball. We had a large empty field near our house that
was probably owned by someone. This one was overgrown with bull clover. It
was almost impossible to play on it.
One day a guy came along
with a tractor and a mower. He was a city employee who was mowing the weeds
along the edge of the road. I ran out, stopped him, and offered him a buck to
mow our field. It’s all I had. He hesitated and I quickly threw in a
bottle of beer. He relented and spent about 20 minutes mowing the field for
us. He spent another 20 minutes swilling the warm beer I had pilfered from my
father’s supply.
We played the rest of
the summer on that field. We used bricks for bases, sticks for goal posts,
and coin flips for referees. I had not realized what a great deal we had got
until I heard about Saginaw. Compare a buck and a beer, even adjusted for inflation, to the
five million bucks for a soccer field. We even had more fun playing because
no stupid adults had time to interfere with us. I think adults have too much
free time now. The kids should find something for them to do to keep them
busy so they won’t spoil the kids fun. Duh!
Mercenaries:
We hear from the news
that a mob of gunslingers from Blackwater USA shot up a bunch of innocent bystanders in Iraq. I guess we have rules and guidelines for
mercenaries, but there is no legal system in place to hold them accountable.
They are just loose cannons in a place where the last thing needed is another
mob of hit men. What are they doing there? Why are they, rather than our
Marines, providing security for our diplomats? America already has a big black eye over this mess in Iraq. If we can’t handle it, we should get out.
We should not let mercenaries operate in our stead. Our military is
accountable. These Wild West cowboys are not and they lack the training and
discipline to do what they are pretending to do. They are just street thugs
from all over America.
The Round Table:
Some regular
participants on the This Week show have a discussion they call the round
table. They did not come right out with the term, but they did indirectly
acknowledge that King George is insane. Heck, most people know that. I can
even put a name to his problem. It’s a condition with the clinical
name, paranoia.
From Microsoft’s
Bookshelf:
paranoia
(pàr´e-noi´e) noun
1. A
psychotic disorder characterized by delusions of persecution or grandeur,
often strenuously defended with apparent logic and reason.
Marceau, Marcel:
He is a French mime,
probably the best in the world. He died last week. Since he first developed
his art, he has been copied frequently by untalented fools. I encountered one
of them when I visited the University of Colorado in Boulder several years ago. This was a brain dead college
kid who thought to mime meant to mock. I was crippled at the time and unable
to walk properly. I managed with a cane, but not well. This dumbo got behind
me and mocked my stride. It is a measure of the mentality of college students
that many of them found this to be humorous. Mockery comes out of an
adolescent mentality. Mime by contrast is an art form that comes out of a
passion for artistic expression. Marcel himself express the sense of it thus,
“I have spent more than half a lifetime trying to express the tragic
moment.”
Power:
A silly woman, Sally
Field won an acting award recently. She stood on the stage holding the award
over her head and screeched stridently, “If women were in power there
would never be any *&#@ wars.” With her Hollywood audience that earned her a huge ovation. I found
the performance ridiculous. I’m sure she did not earn her award with
performances like that. If she wants to make political speeches, she should
get better writers.
I never would have believed
women would put an end to war, but I once thought our government would work
better if women got involved. Since then I have been a careful observer while
many women actually came to power and I discover I was dead wrong. Now I
think I know why. Whether it’s women or men, those who seek power are
exactly the ones who should never have it. They are guaranteed to abuse it.
Third Rate:
If Columbia ever was a great university, it moved from that
position to a third rate university in a single act by their president. After
inviting the leader of Iran to speak in a forum for so-called free speech
the Columbia president, rather than introducing him,
castigated him in public. This was not a forum for free speech. It was a
mockery of free speech. The leader of Iran was set up. So much for higher education and
American values. Don’t choose to misunderstand me. I do not like this
Iranian leader at all, but he did not invite himself here. He was invited
into a so-called free speech public forum to make his case. He never had a
chance, but he showed more class than the university president in the way he
responded to the unwarranted attack. He has at least as much right to common
courtesy as George Bush.
Back to the Weekly Notes 2007 Archives
|